Seven Deadly Sins: Anger | David Marvin

all right let's go hey welcome friends in the room friends in houston i know you guys are meeting hey i love you all too uh welcome friends in northwest are fayetteville arkansas and the other 13 live locations uh i know fort worth tonight is also gathering so depending on where you're at welcome everyone and everybody just tuning in from online it has been a minute and gosh man it is good to see you guys and like jd said some of y'all you guys got you got plans after time or something hey i'm gonna welcome you in something that happened recently in my life since last time we were all together i do pretty much the same thing every single day after i get home from work i go into the house i kiss my wife kiss my kids and then i take our 130 pound rhodesian ridgeback on a walk now i don't walk and i don't run so i have a long board yes just like that 14 year old that you grew up with and i take him on the longboard we have a shot caller don't email me he never gets shocked he's like a big baby elephant that you got to take on a walk once a day and i take him one lap around the block get on the long board hop on there no leash he just follows right behind me i finish it and then we go inside a couple days ago i was doing that got home took the lap with the dog and i went up to the house and i was about to go inside and i smelled smoke and you know when you have that experience where you could smell like you know it was like six o'clock at night and there's a difference when you smell something like grilling steaks it smells like hickory or like man that sounds great and then you have all we've all smelled what is clearly like something is burning around here like significantly burning so i begin to go is somewhere on our house something on fire like and i'd be going to like look around the outside kind of the perimeter of the house and look through and be like man that because that's not a good thing anytime that happens where is this smell coming for i mean really strong smell and i get around the house and i don't see anything and and so i i begin to kind of wonder if there's something on with the neighbor's house and i go over i'm in my alley behind my neighbor's house and between my house and i see clearly smoke coming up from the backyard and not just like any smoke like oh maybe they're doing s'mores you know that's what people do in june like a thick white billowing cloud of smoke like clearly something is burning over there and i'm beginning to go like man what is possibly going on and i come up to the fence and i didn't want to just like open their gate and go into their backyard like hey it's the neighbors we're coming over if they were just i don't know what they could have been doing but i couldn't see so i go up to the fence and i begin to just like try to peek over and see what's going on hoping there's no one like sunbathing nude or something going on and if you're to like look over uh and which clearly if they're doing that and they have smoke they've got more problems than we can talk about here but anyway so i began like trying to look at vince but it was too tall it was a really high fence so it was one of those moments where guys at least you've all experienced this when you were a kid you threw a ball over the fence and you had to like hop over where i'm jumping up to try and hold myself for a second just to see and i keep jumping up to hold myself hoping that no one's looking out the window like who's the psychopath that is jumping over our fence and all i can see is smoke i mean like thick white smoke i can't see the fire and because as far as i could get up there i couldn't see what was down below and so i take the dog the baby elephant take him back home put him inside and i'm like hey uh talking to my wife i'm gonna go check on there's something burning in the neighbor's yard by the time i got back over there you know maybe they had seen me jumping over someone had put the fire out and i still never quite figured out exactly what was taking place back there but the reason i start there is because in that moment i know that there's a fire that is taking place and fire is not necessarily one of those bad things where any time it's present you're like hey this is an emergency we need to make sure that we put that up fire can be a great thing it's not inherently a bad thing a fire and a fire pit in your backyard can be awesome a fire moving through your property burning the fence or burning your house is an incredibly destructive thing but it's not inherently or not always necessarily a bad thing it depends on what the source of the fire is on why there's a fire there on what it's burning what does it have to do with seven deadly sins tonight we're going to talk about a deadly sin that is very similar to fire and that it's not inherently every time it's there a bad thing there's plenty of times that it's appropriate to be there but if unchecked or if they're for the wrong reason or expressed in the wrong way just like a fire is incredibly destructive and that seventh deadly sinner that one of the deadly sins is anger anger's one of those things that inside of your life it's not always the wrong thing there are appropriate times the bible says god is angry at times in scripture specifically at injustice in our world you can't love someone and not experience anger right like if i love someone and someone is hurting them or abusing them i would rightly feel anger righteous anger towards that person until the god feels that there's appropriate times i have anger it's not always bad when you look at the news and you see what happens with george floyd you should appropriately feel anger that is wrong not okay there's appropriate experiences of anger but at the same time there's also not appropriate experiences of anger or expressions of anger there's sinful anger that can take place it depends on what the source with the cause what's taking place tonight we're not talking about righteous anger we're gonna talk about the deadly sin of sinful anger because i'm like seven or really all of them can be toxic but this one in particular the effects are seen and are rippling all throughout our culture of anger being experienced and not know how to express it and what we're about to talk about tonight i promise you this if just christians would apply the things that we're going to look at myself you if you claim to be a follower of jesus if just us would apply the teaching of jesus on it relates to this our world would change it's one of the things that it's impossible to not look around people are angry about corona people are angry about their job people are angry about the fact that they can't work people are angry about the fact that they are work people are angry about the fact that we're streaming or we're meeting right now people are angry about any list of things and oftentimes sinful anger can grab our hearts and anytime it does it is devastating and it is destructive and this will destroy your marriage if you allow it to it will destroy your relationships if you're allowed to but it doesn't have to so we're going to look at three things in the scripture what is the root of anger because i think it'll surprise you we're going to look at the results over and over the scriptures say if you don't deal with your anger that will take place and then look at the remedy that god uniquely provides in our world unlike any other remedy that our world has to offer so we're going to look at the roots if you take notes the roots the results in the remedy the first one the root of sinful anger let me ask a few questions before we go in there because the challenge with anger is it kind of masks itself so most people are like look i'm not angry i'm just frustrated i'm not angry i'm just disappointed i'm not angry and it kind of masks behind these little things but here's some ways that you may know that you're angry is there anyone in your life that a part of you hopes that they fail or they suffer you got some anger and bitterness buried in your heart is there anyone whose name when you bring them up it makes you upset thinking about what they did makes you upset anger and bitterness taken root is there anyone who you'd avoid in public or you wouldn't want to go to that party you wouldn't want to go there or go to that dinner if they were around because of something that happened between you there's anger is there anyone you're waiting maybe it's a family member maybe it's a friend maybe it's an old roommate you're waiting to let back into your life till they apologize and say what they did or pay back for what they did there's anger that's taken place you can't always tell on the outside a lot of times the most angry people they're just totally internal and they just replay tapes over and over on their head they've got these constant kind of battles going on in their mind and they wouldn't think of themselves as angry because they're not very vocal about it but there's anger buried in their heart oftentimes leading them to keep those feelings to themselves which only makes it worse so the root of sinful anger where does it come from jesus says this in mark chapter 7 verse 21 for it is within and out of a person's heart that evil thoughts come wait a second thoughts come from your heart jesus i think you mean the mind the bible over and over when it talks about the heart and the mind it just kind of talks about the control center the command center of your operating system if you will if you think so when it says hearts thoughts come out of the hearts but what's surprising is what he mentions next here's the evil thoughts that come out of your heart sexual morality theft murder adultery greed malice deceit lewdness envy slander arrogance and folly what do you say jesus those are all actions what do you mean that those are evil thoughts she says every evil action comes from an evil thought that has taken place in the mind and all of that comes from the heart all of these are evils and they come from inside and they defile a person jesus says sinful anger what leads to malice what leads to murder comes from within the heart in other words typically when i get angry i get upset i usually don't think oh man there's something going on inside of me that i think this person lied to me this person took credit for something that they didn't do this person cut me off in traffic and they need to learn how to drive i think that the expressions of anger come from the outside and jesus says no no no anger comes from within you may go through life and it'll trigger it stress will trigger your anger and all of a sudden you're just really overwhelmed at work and you explode on your roommate or you lash out at a friend jesus said that's not because of the stress that's because you have something broken inside of your heart the root of your anger comes from within if you don't fix that you cannot fix your anger jesus baby brother jesus or james his baby brother was not named jesus that would be interesting james at some point in his life trusted in christ we don't have time to go into that but how crazy is that his little brother and he writes a book called the book of james and the fourth chapter of that book listen to what he says about what causes conflict causes division causes fights what causes fights and corals among you well james let me give you the answer she was mean she was hurtful they didn't respond they didn't invite me to come nope they come from your desires that battle within you you desire but you do not have so you kill and james is exaggerating you're saying like you desire so you don't have to kill and also go no no i'm never killed the same expression that leads to killing someone is anger hatred bitterness and james says all of that anger it doesn't come from the outside it doesn't come from what was done or wasn't done against you it comes from within in hebrews chapter 12 verse 15 it says this see to it that no one falls short of the grace of god and that no bitter root grows up and causes trouble and defiles many the bible says like bitterness think about this it's so brilliant it's like a root that'll come in your life and as it grows it begins to impact your life why is that brilliant because what's a root a root is something that you know the roots of a plant the roots of a flower are something beneath the surface you can't see them but they're impacting everything that you can see on the surface this is what dr hebers says you know that's like what bitterness is like it's this thing that is beneath the surface and it just gets buried underneath there and somebody called you a name in sixth grade and every time now anybody insults the way that you look on the outside so there's a root of bitterness that's grown underneath and you can't see it but it's buried there and it's affecting everything just like the roots of a flower affect everything that you can see above the surface that root of bitterness is going to affect everything above the surface in your life and if you want to deal with anger or sinful anger it involves dealing with it at a heart level in other words the temptation will always be or often be to think that anger is something that is caused by other people around us as though like you know i'm justified in what i did because of you know the actions that they took my roommate all of a sudden i come home we've been sharing a room for a while i've told them so many times when you wash the dishes and you get dishes in there make sure that you don't leave it out because your little crusty noodles end up caking to the outside of the metal and it's disgusting and how many times what am i your mom right now and you think that man i'm angry because of that jesus says no no no anger comes from within is that like this would be you and i's heart and inside of it has a potential and the capacity to carry around anger and then something triggers it where a roommate comes out and comes all of a sudden and they fail to you know clean up the dishes that they had or they borrowed your clothes without even asking and all of a sudden a boom and it pops out and it's not because of something that they did what they did just triggered the anger that is already inside of your heart to come out this is the way the bible talks about it you'll be going along and road rage people are driving and you think it's because look you're driving we're going up 75 and we're locked gridlock here and everyone if you could just learn how to drive and you explode and you think it's because people don't know how to drive you think it's because people if we could all just drive 70 people the problem would go away and james says no no no jesus says no the anger it's already in there those are just triggers that are bringing it out to the surface at work where you snap and you respond to a co-worker or to your boss or you lashed out with an email because they got credit for something that they didn't do or you lasted because you didn't get credit because you because of something you did do and jesus says something really profound and really necessary if you and i are going to experience freedom from anger which is knowing anytime that anger pops up it's a heart issue it's underneath the surface there is a way to address it and if you do not address it like any fire that seeps out will continue to burn and bring destruction to everything it touches and let me just say this in the room all of us have certain levels of anger that are buried in our heart and all of us also express that anger in different ways like there's really at least two categories of people in the room there would be people when it comes to getting angry they would be what you'd call an exploder this is the guy gets upset punches a hole in the wall we're very clearly like yes he has an anger problem very easy to see this is the girl who you know gets upset just goes on you know rampage online and she's keyboard karen going to everybody's comments being like i can't believe you it's clear like man she's clearly angry so there's the exploder and then there are the imploders this is a much more difficult to see perspective on anger or expression of anger this is the person who doesn't explode outwardly they get hurt and they just shut down they begin you hurt them in a relationship they totally withdraw this person ends up behaving passively aggressive towards you or you know she's like uh you're friends or you thought you were friends and you're like well why didn't you invite me to the part and she's like what and she just behaves in a way where she's passively aggressive is in passive aggressive meaning on the outside it's passive but there's clearly anger and hurt that is taping that's taking place and just as angry and hurt and seeping with bitterness can be that person often the imploder if you are one you deny your anger and somebody hurts you and you don't have time to totally process it all in the moment and so they're like hey i'm sorry did that hurt you're like no i know everything's fine just please leave me alone for the rest of my life and that's what you do but you harbor that anger and you're going to carry it around and you may not lash out at the person who hurt you but you'll carry it around and it will come out even on people who have nothing to do with that hurt but the root of all of it is at the heart and there is a way to address it ultimately the results of what happens from sinful anger are the same every single time jesus says this in matthew chapter 5 verse 21 this is in the sermon on the mount the most famous sermon jesus ever gave just picture it he called him out serving him out because he taught it in matthew chapter five verse one we're told from a mountainside jesus is sitting there early in his ministry very first message he ever gives thousands of people gathered around see it this israeli 33 or 30 year old rabbi shows up and he begins to teach and blow everybody's category in the sermon and this is one of the things that he says you've heard it said long ago you shall not murder and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment but i tell you anyone who is angry with a brother or a sister or a person will be subject to judgment that word subject to judgment is just out of step with god's command has fallen short of what god commands in other words jesus is like you guys put the line at murder as long as you don't murder no anger problem jesus says no that's not where gathers a line anyone who holds anger in their heart is out of step with god now the word anger in this context of being angry is not the word like you had an angry thought one a one-off occasion it's a word to dwell on or focus on that anger continue to replay it not deal with it in other words it's not an anger you feel in a moment it's an anger you you fuel or you feed over time that you keep replaying you keep replaying and the more you replay it the more you continue to not believe more and more the best about someone you believe the worst and worst and worst and worst and worst and jesus says when you do that you are just as guilty and just as off as the person who murders and then he says verse 23 if you are offering a gift at the altar i feel like if you're going to church and you remember that your brother or sister has something against you i want you to leave your gift at the altar in the front of the altar go there to church raising you turn graves into gardens yes i will and you realize man i think that becky was hurt by the tone of that email or my text message or what i did he says in the moment do you realize that i want you to leave your gift at the altar and go and be reconciled in that relationship then come back and offer your gift why would you say that jesus because jesus knew that the results of sinful anger every time are broken relationships every time sinful anger takes place in heart every time you allow and i allow it to exist in your hearts the damage that's going to take place is damage to you and damage to your relationships and i'm not even talking about like oh well you know becky hurt me in that moment so now i guess becky and i are just going to be off you harbor that bitterness and it's going to show itself back up and all kinds every relationship or lots more relationships than just that one because the damage or the results of sinful anger in the heart are always broken relationships jesus says something really profound i think about this i don't know maybe you're here and a friend invited you and you're not even sure where you are in faith what jesus just said to his audience how category blowing was this i want you to prioritize over giving any sort of sacrifice overcoming the church and worse i want you to prioritize your verda or your horizontal relationships with other people above this one like in other words hey we're not going to be good if you continue to live not good with other people you continue to hide behind like well you know they hurt me and they need to come apologize to me because really you know i may have not been the best in that moment but if anybody is at fault it's them jesus would say you just recognize that you're off with someone and you should go seek that person out because if you don't broken relationship will take place there it'll take place in your future and in a way it disconnects you from right relating to god some of you were really hurt by your dad and i love you i see you i love this group i love this generation i believe in this generation and as a bigger brother in life i'm telling you you've got to forgive him holding on to that is only going to hurt you and you know what if i knew your story and i knew what happened i would be angry too you holding on to that and that anger it's not going away and it's going to keep following you so as someone who has no skin in the game other than i care about each one of you you have got to deal with that hurt some of you have a past job and you weren't treated right there and so one day you just kind of like went m.i.a and you were like i'm going to do ghosting to my work and i'm just saying i'm done i'll leave the computer and i'm not coming back anymore because i've been updating my linkedin profile and i got some leads and i'm going to run that direction because you guys don't appreciate me and ain't nobody got time for that and you decided you were going to let that hurt rule your life and you may need to call up your old boss say hey i didn't act like god would have had me and the way that i responded to how i was feeling or the hurt that i experienced was wrong and you need to forgive and make the decision and i'm going to talk more in a second about what that looks like some of you are angry understandably you're just angry at men because you were sexually abused and it wasn't your fault and that type of action angers the heart of god it was wrong it wasn't deserved and it wasn't okay but you've got to work through that hurt and that anger and i hate that you feel that and it's really understandable you feel that but if you keep holding that it is not going away and god loves you he doesn't want you to go through life holding on to that pain and that anger it's not hurting them it's hurting you and will continue to hurt you i don't know what experiences maybe it's family or a sibling or a past roommate and you're really hurt understandably really hurt a boyfriend who cheated on you but if you hold on to that bitterness it'll continue to grow to add more experiences like it and like a fire will eventually make its way out hurt any relationship that's in your life when i do counseling with marriage or with couples when i do marriage counseling or i agree to marry someone i ask the same question one of the questions i ask i ask it every time and i ask both the groom to be and the bride to be is there anyone in your life who you've not forgiven parent past relation is there anyone that you're harboring holding to bitterness on and if they say yes so and so i tell them i won't do the wedding until they've worked through that it's not because i don't love them it's not because i don't care about them it's because i love them so much i want them to make sure they enter into marriage with the footing that i'm not going through life holding on to hurts and bitterness and anger and grudges because if you hold on to hurts before you get into marriage you're going to hold on to them when you get in there because you're already used to it it's just what i do when somebody really deeply hurts me and almost always the case the answer to that question if someone says yes i haven't forgiven this person you know what it is it's not that oh you know what the the grocery clerk at trader joe's was like oh you're gonna have one bag and i was like oh my gosh this is the person i'm angry it's never that person it's my dad it's my mom she walked out it's my sister it's some like intimate relationship and i lovingly look and i say if you can't work through that and forgive that person you're not ready to marry him or you're not ready to marry her because that intimate relationship that really hurts you that's generally how it gets hurt is it's like it's a father figure it's a mother figure it's a sibling it's my own blood that's why the pain is so deep you will have the same experience with your husband with your wife listen to me very closely if you have not forgiven people as lovingly as i can say it you are not ready to get married 85 of you 80 of you will get married by age 35. so everyone but y'all and uh i'm totally kidding that's true statistically speaking that's true statistically speaking what else is true is 50 of you will get divorced why because people go through life and they hold on to these hurts and they feel justified in these hurts and i can't believe that he did that and no one ever says you need to deal with that pain you need to deal with that hurt then they take it into marriage and then the most intimate human relationship you can have anyone know what that is it's not your sister it's your spouse the person who the most intimate relationship you have and then they hurt you and just how deeply intimate it is also equates to how deeply painful it will be when they hurt you and they will hurt you sometimes intentionally sometimes not intentionally it's just a part of being married to another sinful human being so if you haven't worked through and you're the person who man when i get hurt i hold on i hit the ejection button i get out you are not ready to get married because when you move in that direction marriage is one deep hurt after another and having to choose i'm not holding on to this grudge what i mean like imagine with me i saw this illustration a friend of mine shared it with me and i was just like that's such a great illustration especially for this group as it relates to marriage and i know a lot of you like dude i'm not even dating and you're angry at me because you're talking about marriage i know you're not i'm saying before you even get there you need to know if you hold on to that hurt you hold on you know that roommate and i can't believe that he did that and i don't talk to him anymore you're the type of person that is going to hold on to hurt against your spouse because you're going to get in there and you're going to realize as great as you know if you're dating and you're like not us baby we're together forever it's amazing you're going to realize there are going to be times where they deeply hurt you and you're going to find yourself going i cannot believe that and all of a sudden if you make you're already making the practice that i get hurt hold on to it you're going to hold on to it and the more that you do it's going to wall off and separate you from that other person what do i mean you're going to get into marriage and all of a sudden you're going to be around that special someone girl and you guys got married like go there with me in your head so you guys got married it's beautiful you're probably not even dating but just mentally put a faceless person next to you and you're like they look like everything i ever wanted them and this is so great and they have the job that we want and we're married together go there with me first it just happened you get married things are going great honeymoon everything's awesome eventually you're like oh man you brought into this relationship debt we got to get rid of your debt but we got to get rid of my debt so we're getting on a budget honey and then she's going to show up and she's going to say hey great news i know you're gonna be pumped for me there was a sale at nordstrom's and so they had these shoes and i was like oh my gosh i can't believe that uh it would be like wrong to not buy these shoes because i'm gonna need shoes eventually and this is the most affordable i've ever seen before and you're gonna be like we're on a budget babe why did you not follow the budget we agreed to that we set out on you you like continue to do this and i'll tell you why it's because you're selfish you don't care about it and you'll lash out and you'll hold on to that grudge and all of a sudden that offense gets buried inside of your heart and you're gonna go this is just who she is she doesn't care same thing's gonna happen to girls you're gonna find yourself your husband all of a sudden you had weekend plans and when you were dating one of the things you loved about him was he was flexible he was just you know go lucky he doesn't keep a calendar like he's not rigid and i'm a little type a and so it really balances us out and i just love that about him and then you get married and you know what you had a shower planned a good friend of you maybe your bridesmaid and your wedding she's got a wedding shower coming up and you were supposed to go as a couple shower you're going to go together and he double booked because remember you dare you married a guy who's not rigid doesn't keep a calendar so he's a little flexible and you're like you don't even care about me you knew how important this was to me and the thing that you were so like oh i just love that about him all of a sudden you're like you don't care then one night you come home and one of you decides you're gonna initiate sex and the other person finds himself going oh man it's just been like a really stressful time or i'm just really tired right now and i'm just kind of not in the mood i know what you're thinking you're like no no we won't no i will always be in the mood i'm going to marry someone the same sex drive that i have we'll always be in the move no you won't and you're thinking right now no he's wrong we totally won't nope you're still wrong it's not gonna happen and you are gonna initiate sex and they are gonna say no and you're gonna feel offended and you're gonna go oh what do you just think i'm fat now is that what this is about and you're gonna run there and think he doesn't care about me and all of a sudden that offense continues to build and to build and to build and then we didn't even introduce the in-laws okay and she's got a really close relationship with her mom so she calls her mom all the time and you know when you were dating you didn't even realize it because you didn't see her on the phone all the time because you didn't live together and she would just call her mom every night after she got done with the date she's driving home she's calling her mom you don't even know it they're really close talks all the time then you get married you live together you see it all the time sitting on the couch like i thought we were going to watch the show and she's talking to her mom giving the update and when she has trouble she needs advice who does she call she calls her mom you had no idea and all of a sudden you begin to think this woman doesn't even respect me she doesn't care about my opinion she just cares about her mom she cares about what she thinks way more she does what i think and all of a sudden bitterness after bitterness then you got holidays and you were like man holidays are gonna be great i can't wait once you get to the fact that hey you now divide the carries on the holidays so you're like oh we gonna christmas at your moms or christmas at my mom's and she's like well um i think we both know that your family's a little awkward and mime gives the best gifts and so this feels like really easy let's do thanksgiving with yours you're like thanksgiving that's like the b team version of holiday you don't care you know my mom gave birth to me right and all of a sudden what gets buried is anger bitterness and hurt and then he ends up working late and you had plans that night and you're like i told you we had dinner with the smiths do you not care about our family and he's like yes what do you think i do at work all day just get a massage i care about our family i work really hard and both of you go you don't care you don't care about a family you don't care that i work and all of a sudden step after step it just begins to grow and then you introduce little ones those are going to be fun they got these little kids they look like you it's little mini me little girl princess dresses all the time super fun they also don't sleep that great so one of you is going to be what we call a light sleeper and what's going to happen is they're going to be the one who hears the children at night typically this is always the mom they've got some weird spidey sense but they end up waking up in the middle of the night they hear the kids crying out there like and they wonder why don't you care about our kids i'm always the one getting up in kids and i'd like a little help from time to time because i'm up all hours of the night and you don't even care and i kicked you six times last night and you don't care about your children and it continues to grow and grow and you know what's weird like you get better over time as you do these things and you can hold on and little things that you're like how did that even become a thing it becomes a thing what i mean like eventually after those little kids come you're gonna be sometimes things happen with the body and hormones and there i go and the wife will feel like man i just don't feel as pretty as i used to feel and i can't work out nearly as much because i have these babies around me all the time that are just little milk monsters and i feel like i'm just kind of gross and then you get this sale and you get that dress and he was like get that dress and you get that dress and you get home you go into a banquet first work and you put it on you're like oh man i just i just need some affirmation right now i just feel like it's been kind of gross for a while and i just want to look pretty and just be affirmed and you ask your husband how do i look and he says great men she doesn't want you to say great she wants you to say oh wow we are getting a babysitter we are canceling the banquet we're getting a hotel is what we're getting that's what she wants you to say but she doesn't hear that so all of a sudden she runs to great i look great he doesn't even love me and one by one by one your relationship begins to get walled off and that offense after offense builds a fence between the two of you it happens it's happening it's why the divorce rate is what it is and if you can't learn to be the type of person that doesn't hold on and say i'm keeping this you're not ready for marriage and if you're in a place where you're seriously dating and moving that direction and you haven't forgiven people in your life i'll talk about that in just a second you are not ready to move in that direction and now is the time whether you're single dating whatever you're at to begin to form the habit i don't hold on to these because anytime i do it's going to keep showing up and keep breaking down relationships jesus says it happens every time there is a solution ephesians chapter 4 verse 26 and 27 says this and your anger do not sin do not let the sun go down while you're angry do not give the devil a foothold get rid i want you to listen to this next verse the apostle paul wrote this next verse from a roman jail cell where law enforcement had wrongly arrested him from a crime he did not commit he was waiting to be killed for the crime of being a christian he went sitting you know drinking a latte at some all-inclusive resort when he wrote what he's about to write it's pretty crazy and as he leaned back with scars on his back from being whipped against the jail cell he penned down the following words in 60 a.d rid of all bitterness rage and anger all bitterness paul all of it brawling in slander in every form of malice which is just ill will towards people how do i do that paul be kind and compassionate to one another forgiving each other just as christ just is in christ god forgave you the remedy for sinful anger is forgiveness and i'm making the decision to forgive now what does forgiveness mean because this is a word that's really churchy that most people are like oh yeah i know what it means and they don't like forgiven forget that's right no that's not right what does forgiveness mean biblically everyone follow me it means i'm releasing in the face of hurt and the face of harm taking place against me in the face of whatever has made me angry angry and bitter i'm choosing to release my demand for justice or for payback to god i'm choosing hey you cheated on me and i'm really angry and i want you to suffer because of that i'm choosing to forgive you by releasing the demand that's in my heart for justice to god forgiveness is not excusing sin it's not saying oh that's not that big no sin is a huge deal it's such a big deal jesus had to die for it forgiveness does not require forgetting in fact i don't even know that you can fully forgive someone if you just forget what that'd be awesome if men in black could just show up and be like hey you never remember this again no real forgiveness shows itself and that you did that and i forgive you i'm not holding you accountable for paying back for what you owe me for what you took for how you hurt me it's releasing that to god i'm trusting god with justice forgiveness is not denying your hurt or your anger and forgiveness is not conditional it does not require the person to ask for forgiveness or to own their part or even be present it's releasing the demand for justice to god the bible just said how do we forgive and paul said you forgive like god forgave you when you didn't deserve it you still don't deserve it haven't earned it but in christ he forgave you he paid for all of that debt for every hurt for every wrong for every justice that will and must take place and we forgive just like god forgave in matthew chapter 18 let me tell a really quick story we're not far from land of the plane matthew chapter 18 the disciples call him to jesus and this was all throughout jesus teachings i mean it's pretty crazy you read over and over like he was really passionate about i love relationships and if you hold on to anger you're not gonna have good relationships you gotta forgive and so jesus had these guys the disciples that heard him talk about this a lot and they come up to him and peter is like hey guys i got a question for jesus i gotta answer i'm really proud of my answer can't wait to see what happens goes up to jesus jesus how many times do i forgive my brother now in jesus's time there were like a few schools of thought or like there were these like you know philosophy the rabbis basically that had these camps of like hey this is the number you forgive up to three times if they do that action you forgive them other people will be like no you forgive them once if they do it again you know they don't want shame on me if they do it no however their expression goes if they do it twice shame on me once shame on them whatever that these different schools of thought peter comes up he says how many times should i forgive and then he throws out what he's like a zinger up to seven times and the reason i say he would have been proud of it is because there's no rabbis that were teaching that so he's going hey look how generous i am up to seven huh how about that look how great i am and jesus says not seven times peter 70 science 70 times seven in other words you never stop forgiving and jaw drops happen all around jesus we go what over and over and over over and over and over cuz that's how god has forgiven you and he tells this parable it's a beautiful parable and we don't have time to read it right now but here's the summary of the parable jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like this there was a guy who had a six billion dollar debt literally if you take the number that jesus equated six billion dollars this dude had hit vegas way too many times something had happened he got in debt to another guy six billion dollars and the guy says hey you're way overdue on your debt you gotta pay your debt and the guy says i can't pay it's six billion dollars he says all right take him take everything he owns take his family and sell them and we'll take the products that are over there or we'll take whatever we make off of that person and the servant we're told that it was in debt he throws himself to his knees he begins to say jesus our jesus if he gets to say to the person in the story i'll pay it back please give me enough time please show me mercy and those listening would have known you can't pay 6 billion back this was a debt way too great but the servant's begging please give me mercy please i'll pay it back and we're told the person he was in debt to showed him mercy and said i will forgive the debt. the guy gets up he goes home he's really excited he's going to go tell his wife we were in six bill that's a good day you get six billion out of debt that's a that's an exciting day we're going out for champagne or sparkling grape juice or whatever you feel okay about and he goes and on the way home he bumps into a guy who owes him a thousand bucks and he grabs the guy and he says where's my thousand bucks jesus is telling the story so brilliant he's a great storyteller he's telling his audience on his way home he bumps into the guy that owed him a thousand bucks he begins to shake him and say give me my thousand dollars and that guy says please give me time i'll pay it back i'll pay it back i'll pay it back and he says no and he throws and sells his family and does what's supposed to happen to him and we're told that the original guy the six billion dollar guy who forgave the loan finds out about it and he comes and he says you wicked servant i forgave you a million times more of what you owed well you can never pay back and this guy actually could pay back what you owed him and yet you didn't show mercy to him you think i'm going to show mercy to you and then jesus says this line this is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from the heart are you saying that like if you know i'm a christian but i don't forgive somebody that you're gonna throw me in some jail and jesus is saying if you're a christian forgive people because you've been forgiven of a debt way bigger than whatever they did to you and i know that's crazy because the pain in this room i've been doing this 13 years the stories that i've heard of horrific things that have happened are that they're horrific and jesus would say no matter what the pain was and it wasn't right and it wasn't deserved and it wasn't fair and it wasn't okay that pales in comparison to what you and i have done and sinning against god and you must forgive and choose to forgive does it look like to forgive it looks like canceling the debt and let me be really clear i'm going to move quick and i want to best i can help practically walk through what that looks like i think in your life inside of the parable jesus says forgiveness is canceling a debt that's owed saying hey you don't owe me anymore and i want to help you i want to encourage you to do something that's really helpful for me it was a moment i sat down in my life where i realized i was carrying a lot of hurt from my father who's absent wasn't present and i began to like process through that pain and through just the counsel of scriptures like these and other believers in my life going in order to cancel the debt it's really hard to cancel the debt if you don't know how much the debt is if you don't know what the debt is they began to go like man identifying what did he take from you or what was taken from you because if i want to cancel that you know this blanket statement ends up happening for a lot of christians they're like yes i forgive i feel good today and i forgive and then it pops back up in order to really forgive you got to decide hey i'm not holding this against you anymore i'm canceling what i feel like you owe me because god has already canceled all that i owe him every way that i've sinned against him and i sat down and you know what i began to do i begin to write out very specifically maybe this will be help from you you took from me having a father around you took from me a dad who came to my sport games in college in high school you took from me monday nights i had to drive across town to that terrible apartment and i didn't want to and i have a choice because custody do orders you took from me having an example in my life of what it looks like to love a wife and i'm deciding you don't owe me anymore you never owe me every sin we commit is ultimately a sin against god and i'm not holding on to that anymore and that's between you and god every sin that you've done will be paid for on the cross just like every sin i've paid done was paid for on the cross i'm not carrying that anymore some of you you've got to do this and my heart breaks because i know he took from you your virginity he took from you having a mother around her she took from you he took from you the shame that you carry every day from abortion that you didn't want to get he told you you needed to get you've got to let it go holding on to it will only hurt you and one of the most healthy things you can do is to sit down and write out this is what was taken from me this is what i experienced and it wasn't right and i'm not saying it was right by forgiving it but i'm not gonna live my life allowing my past experiences and past hurts and people that hurt me so deeply to rule my life to rule my future marriage to determine the type of person i'm gonna be i'm not doing that anymore i'm not putting weather on him and have you know a healthy relationship with my future husband in the hands of somebody who did horrific things against i'm not giving you that power and it won't be easy and it's really hard but god promises when we do not only do we look lord like jesus we experience freedom because holding on to that bitterness it's only going to hurt you and as you head into life all of us have sinned against a perfect god and what we do as christians and this is why i say there is no remedy that i know of outside of what jesus did on the cross where the way that we deal with sin that happened against us and terrible painful things that happened against you is not by pretending they didn't it doesn't work it never will work it's by making the decision what you did was terrible it hurt me it deeply i carried that pain for years and it's making the decision i'm not going to carry it anymore because i'm bringing like every hurt i've ever had in life it's to the god who was unjustly unfairly killed crucified and had his life taken for every father in this room who failed their kids for every sexual abuser every racist police officer every atrocious act all of them were paid for and this is the only way to experience freedom is to accept god i'm a way bigger sinner i've done way worse things than what i am asking or what i'm holding other people or i've done equally it's terrible things that the forgiveness that you have extended me is far greater than any forgiveness i'll ever be able to give them and i am accepting you paid for it on the cross every horrific action will be paid for and was paid for on the cross will be paid for by that person for all of eternity every injustice will be made right even the ones not caught on camera and i'm not going to hold on to that bitterness anymore i'm not carrying that for the rest of my life and i love you guys i love you and i don't want that for you but i don't have a decision over whether you're going to release that whether you're going to decide i'm not carrying this any longer i'm not going to define my future but what happened in the past what happened against me in the past it's not a decision i get to make that's when you have to as you walk through that if we can serve and care for and come alongside we'd love to god has extended to all people you bring those and you drop them they have been paid for you don't have to hold those you release them to me you release them to me let me pray father thank you for the fact that when we didn't deserve it we don't deserve it you extended a forgiveness to a debt we could never repay candidly in life it feels like what you ask us to do sometimes is not possible and so i pray that you would help hundreds of us in the room who have experienced hurt at levels we can't even really put into words i've heard from the hundreds in here have been sexually abused or raped i remember those who were molested by a family member their parents divorced their parents was alcoholic they abused them they were robbed they were unjustly treated by coworkers you would help us god to have the strength to do what feels impossible but you went well beyond in the links you went to forgive us and you gave us your spirit so would you buy your spirit help us strengthen us and move us will we be free forgiven we worship you in song amen

Channel: The Porch

Views: 9,370

Rating: 4.949367 out of 5

Keywords: the, porch, dallas, watermark, community, church, christian, christianity, ministry, movement, fort, worth, faith, sermon, dating, truth, bible, advice, biblical, counsel, jonathan pokluda, the porch, watermark community church, young adults, fort worth, david marvin, todd wagner, the bible

Id: yeOKk-zEIzM

Length: 52min 29sec (3149 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 17 2020